A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 07 eBook

None of the Spaniards or Portuguese are in use to
trade up the river Senegal, except one Portuguese
named Ganigogo who dwells far up that river,
where he has married the daughter of one of the kings.
In the towns of Porto d’Ally and Joala, which
are the places of chief trade on this coast, and at
Cauton and Cassan in the river Gambia, there are many
Spaniards and Portuguese who have become resident by
permission of the negroes, and carry on a valuable
trade all along the coast, especially to the Rio San
Dominica and Rio Grande, which are not far distant
from the Gambia, to which places they transport the
iron which they purchase from us and the French, exchanging
it for negro slaves, which are transported
to the West Indies in ships that come hither from Spain.
By order of the governor and renters of the castle
of Mina, and of all those places on the coast of Guinea
where gold is to be had, these residents have a place
limited for them in the river Gambia, beyond which
they must not go under pain of death and confiscation
of their goods; as the renters themselves send their
own barks at certain times up the river, to those
places where gold is to be had. In all those
places hereabout, where we are in use to trade, the
Spaniards and Portuguese have no castle or other place
of strength, merely trading under the licence and
safe conduct of the negroes. Most of the Spaniards
and Portuguese who reside in those parts are banished
men or fugitives, who have committed heinous crimes;
and their life and conversation is conformable to
their conditions, as they are the basest and most
villainously behaved persons of their nation that are
to be met with in any part of the world.

CHAPTER VIII.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS EARLY VOYAGES OF THE ENGLISH.

INTRODUCTION.

The present chapter is rather of an anomalous nature,
and chiefly consists of naval expeditions against
the Spaniards and Portuguese, scarcely belonging in
any respect to our plan of arrangement: yet, as
contained mostly in the ancient English collection
of Hakluyt, and in that by Astley, we have deemed
it improper to exclude them from our pages, where
they may be considered in some measure as an episode.
Indeed, in every extensively comprehensive plan, some
degree of anomaly is unavoidable. The following
apology or reason given by the editor of Astley’s
collection for inserting them in that valuable work,
may serve us likewise on the present occasion; though
surely no excuse can be needed, in a national collection
like ours, for recording the exploits of our unrivalled
naval defenders.